Digesting Google's New PPA Advertising Product — Google announced the testing of a new pay-per-action, or PPA, advertising product today. It's important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that Google controls so much of the online advertising market that just about anything …

Google Tests an Ad Idea: Pay Only for Results — Google is experimenting with a new proposition for advertisers: if you don't get results, you don't pay. — The company said Tuesday that it would expand a test of a system that allows advertisers to pay only when an ad spurs a consumer to take an action …

Aftertaste — Mike Arrington, Tim Bray, and Jonathan Schwartz made for an interesting menage at Sun yesterday evening. As usual I wasn't invited, but Scoble was otherwise occupied and forwarded me the invite. To be fair, Sun doesn't know what to make of me.

New Line nabs 'Gears of War' — Studio wins rights to videogame — New Line has won feature rights to Microsoft and Epic Games' hugely popular vidgame "Gears of War," with Stuart Beattie penning the adaptation and Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey producing via their Temple Hill banner.

Google's Next-Gen of Sneakernet — How do you get 120 terabytes of data — the equivalent of 123,000 iPod shuffles (roughly 30 million songs) — from A to B? For the most part, the old-fashioned way: via a sneakernet. It's not glamorous, but Google engineers hope to at least end …

Google quashes mobile phone talk — Google has poured cold water on claims it is developing a mobile phone. — The search giant said it was more logical to form partnerships with existing handset makers instead. — Google's South-East Asia managing director of sales and operations …

Tool turns unsuspecting surfers into hacking help — A security researcher has found a way hackers can make PCs of unsuspecting Web surfers do their dirty work, without having to actually commandeer the systems. — That's possible with a new security tool called Jikto.

U.S. judge throws out defamation suit against Google — SAN MATEO, California (Reuters) - A U.S. judge has thrown out a lawsuit challenging the fairness of how Web search leader Google Inc. calculates the popularity of Web sites in determining search results, court papers show.

MMOGs Worth More Than $1 Billion In The West — A report by Screen Digest has found that massively multiplayer online games generated more than $1 billion in 2006 in the West (North America and Europe), notes the BBC. The report claims 87 percent of the revenue is from subscriptions …

Feds to rehear Webcaster fee dispute — The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board has granted a series of requests for a rehearing on a contentious decision that would elevate royalty fees required of Internet radio services. — In a one-paragraph document issued Tuesday, Chief Copyright Royalty …

Mobiles set to play the game — For years now senior games industry figures and media analysts have predicted that mobile phone games will revolutionise the industry. — The former head of Sony Europe Chris Deering has described mobile gaming as the "big kahuna", with 1 billion mobile phones worldwide poised to take up games.